SA startup makes EFT payments easy

Oct 26, 2016

A South African startup has developed an EFT payment gateway which is changing the way people and businesses transact.
Anyone who owns a business will have a few horror stories to tell of trying to get payment from clients. It is a problem businesses of all sizes struggle with, providing major headaches around cash flow and often stifling growth.
“The truth is, clients pay when it is a convenient time for them to do so,” says Thomas Pays, co-founder and CEO of i-Pay. “So why not make it as convenient as possible for them to pay?”
At first glance, EFT does not appear to be a convenient payment method, with the effort involved with setting up beneficiaries and waiting for funds to clear. But the i-Pay gateway has made EFT transactions not only faster than paying by credit card, but also less costly for merchants.
For those looking to pay through i-Pay, there is no app to download nor registration to complete, while transactions take place securely through smartphone or desktop browsers.
The i-Pay payment gateway can handle in-store transactions and can also be integrated in ecommerce stores.
For businesses struggling with slow-paying clients and debtors, i-Pay’s billing solutions could be most helpful. The e-billing system offers customers a way to pay directly after opening an invoice, or Push Mobile Payments, which are sent to a customer’s phone and allowing them to settle payment directly from there.
“Our biggest success to date was seeing a client increasing their business revenue on the EFT payment channel by 700% within 30 days of signing up for our service, and then over 1800% in less than 60 days,” notes Pays. “The impact of this on their cash flow is simply incomparable.”
For merchants, using i-Pay to receive payments has several benefits, not least of which is a low barrier of entry, affordable transaction fees (i-Pay charges between 1,5% and 2,5% processing fees on the month’s transaction value), plus no hidden additional costs payable by the business to the banks. There is also a Merchant Dashboard available from the i-Pay team which can be used to track payments, access real-time transactions, generate payment requests and manage bank accounts.
Pays believes that reconciliation is one of the big benefits of the i-Pay gateway, since the system is fully automated. “When you send an invoice, it carries a specific reference that you want your client to use when they make a payment. i-Pay takes that reference and pre-populates it against your bank account, so when payment is received you have the right reference,” he says. “But it goes even further than this since i-Pay integrates with certain ERP and accounting packages, allowing reflection of payments directly on the software side.”
I-Pay is currently being used by a number of prominent South African companies, including Incredible Connection, Clicks, Bidvest, Woolworths, takealot.com, Waltons and Builders Warehouse.